Field of Invention
The disclosure relates to a wireless charging station and wirelessly-chargeable receiver and specifically to the improved discoverability and setup capabilities of those devices.
Related Art
Wireless power transfer stations, such as power pads, have recently become known. However, their current crude designs and low efficiency make them relatively undesired by a large amount of the population. As a result, such power transfer stations have not gained the popularity that was originally expected.
Current wireless power transfer stations lack the means to quickly and efficiently connect with a nearby device. Instead, the connection setup is conventionally performed using wireless power transfer (WPT) communication protocols, which are slow and inaccurate. Therefore, charging devices on a conventional wireless power transfer station may take several seconds to initialize. In addition, without having the ability to communicate between the station and the charging device in a more robust way, the power transfer cannot be easily optimized.
Additional problems will arise when future WPT standards come into use. Conventional power transfer stations lack the ability to operate within alternative standards, nor the ability to even detect such additional standards. As such, new functionality is needed to enhance the usefulness of wireless power transfer stations.